Please distribute to others who may be interested... You are hereby invited to a seminar in our twelfth interdisciplinary series on Evolution, Complexity and Cognition <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108> (ECCO 2015-2016)
Time: Friday November 27 , 14h-16h Place: *D.1.07 , VUB* ------------------------------ *Stigmergy in the Design of Social Environments* Sayfan G. Borghini <https://hit-il.academia.edu/sayfangborghini> ( HIT, Israel) Abstract: The places and spaces we live and exist in, are incrementally growing into systems of impressive volume and proportions, whether cities, information networks, social organizations and the ways they are converging and overlapping, the success of such environments can be described as the production of fine tuned well adapted complex systems. This opens a question concerning which criteria if at all may be applied in guiding the local and global acts of design that are part in shaping such surroundings. And which frameworks can be adopted to introduce change where top-down planning and self-organization processes overlap. The concept of stigmergy is introduced to emphasize the active role that environments, when functional, perform in human social settings as mediums of shared knowledge and mediators of emergent processes of coordination. The wide applicability of the concept in human interaction allows the analysis of relevant parameters that can inform contextual interventions. Structures and artifacts are described as important aspects in the distributed nature of human cognitive processes, and few study cases are presented in order to discuss developing qualities in the prospect of both digital and physical global stigmergic mediums. Biography: Sayfan G. Borghini is currently lecturing and researching at the Master Program in Integrated Design, and at the Academic Innovation Hub (AIH) at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT), Israel. She is a partner in the PLAST (Pattern Languages for Social Innovation) Project and a member in the interdisciplinary Tempus Idea European Project. As part of her research she took part both in the curation and as a scientific advisor in exhibitions exploring novel human-machine interactions and bio-design hybrids. Her background is in biophysics and urban ecology. She is interested in the current reframing of the dialogue between the local and the systemic, both in design and in science. ------------------------------ Upcoming Seminars *Dec. 4 * Ben Goertzel, Francis Heylighen, Cadell Last, Viktoras Veitas *Workshop: Offer networks: a new paradigm for developing an intelligent sharing economy**Dec. 11 * Mark Burdick *Dec. 18 * Jos Jacobs See also the ECCO/GBI calendar <https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=azMyN252aWluM2JoMnU3MXY5OGt2ZzliOGdAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ> . You can add this calendar to your calendar application through here <https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/k327nviin3bh2u71v98kvg9b8g%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics> More info about the ECCO seminar program: http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108 -- Evo Evo Busseniers - Seminar Coordinator ECCO Group (VUB) <http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/1> Email: [email protected] Website: http://vub.academia.edu/EvoBusseniers <http://be.linkedin.com/in/weaver9/>
